Cross My Heart

by Megan Collins

There’s a long tradition of men calling women “crazy”—which your ex-fiancé was all too happy to continue—and it’s a lazy label, one that’s reductive of women’s true experience.

Each of those men had claimed they loved me. They muttered it in the back seats of cars. Moaned it during sex. Tossed it over their shoulder on their way out the door. But now, years later, Nina’s in my head, making me wonder—even as I consider the flaw in her logic. Because the more I think of Brad’s “disrespect,” his “booty call” text—I miss your face—the more I remember how happy it made me. And wouldn’t disrespect feel horrible instead, the way it did when I was dumped before prom, pity-gifted a candle, abandoned at my sister’s wedding?

It showed me something vital, that all the beauty in my life hadn’t ended with my relationship, and I felt such a profound rush of hope that I snapped a photo of that sky and made it my profile picture on Instagram, replacing the one of me and Brad. But it’s like he sensed my moment of peace—or just noticed I’d swapped out his photo—because it was only hours later that he sent that text, and it would be months before I felt anything like serenity again.

So her mind wasn’t broken; it was battling for control. Control of her own narrative. Control of the emotional chaos he’d caused.